Halifax development on hold after heritage building destroyed

A large development in central Halifax is on hold after a heritage building involved in the project was destroyed.

Taylor Dean was in her Carlton Street apartment with her roommate early last Friday afternoon when there was a "massive bang."

"We had no idea where it came from. Our house shook a little," Dean, 22, said Wednesday.

Dean, a Dalhousie University pharmacy student, said she often passed by the site at 1452 Carlton St. en route to class and knew that the plan was to lift it with a crane Friday — so at first she thought maybe the noise was a result of normal construction.

"But … we ran out on the back deck and you could see like something was not right," Dean said.

The house, built in 1861, fell and shattered when it slipped from the crane that was lifting it for a relocation effort.

As of Wednesday, the remnants of the home remained in a pile of rubble. No one was hurt in the collapse, although a piece of the house crashed into the cab where the crane operator had been sitting.

The provincial Department of Labour said Wednesday that two stop work orders had been issued for the site, and one was still in place. They are investigating the incident.

The Halifax Regional Municipality said Thursday an approved closure on College Street has been extended to allow for the removal of the debris and crane. A cleanup plan was submitted to the province last weekend, and started Monday.

Phil Leil, owner of a crane company involved in the move, said the situation was an accident, but "nobody knows what happened."

CBC contacted developer Peter Rouvalis for comment, but did not receive a response before publication.

The collapsed home, and 1456 Carlton St. beside it, are part of the Carlton Victorian Streetscape where most of the homes were built between 1860 and 1906.

Dean said she wasn't surprised to see the collapse, given the state of the Carlton properties.

"They're pretty rotted now, like it's kind of hard to do anything with them," she said. 

According to the development agreement, the plan was to lift the two Carlton Street heritage properties to put in a new foundation. They would then be reinstalled, and two other nearby College Street homes — one of which is also a registered heritage property — would be moved to sit on the same foundation.

The plan calls for all four homes to be renovated to include 34 residential units, while the two large towers would have 577 units.

Local councillor Waye Mason said that because the heritage homes were part of the original development agreement, the entire project is now paused for "months, maybe longer" while the developer works with city staff to come up with new plans.

He said potential solutions include moving a different Robie Street heritage home to replace the fallen one, or building a replica of 1452 — "but we're not there yet."

"We gotta find out why it collapsed, we gotta examine what can we do to make sure that doesn't happen to any of the other buildings," Mason said.

The amended development agreement will eventually come back to Halifax regional council.